Algeria Victims Hailed From Around the World

By

Jeanne Whalen,

Ruth Bender and

Ben Lefebvre

Jan. 22, 2013 9:30 a.m. ET

One was heading out of town after a four-week shift when the militants struck. Another had just returned to Algeria after the Christmas holiday. A third managed to stay alive during the first day of the siege, only to be shot by the hostage takers when Algerian forces stormed the In Amenas gas plant, his brother said.

Algeria said Monday that 37 foreigners were killed in the hostage crisis. The victims hailed from all over the world. Several were from Scotland or Texas, two common homelands of the international petroleum-worker community. Six were from the Philippines, two were Romanian and one was French. The biggest group confirmed dead so far—seven still unnamed employees of the engineering firm JGC Corp.19630.47%—was Japanese.

Norwegian company Statoil,STO-2.08% meanwhile, said five of its employees were still missing Monday.

Many of the victims had spent years hopping from continent to continent in an industry that often sends its employees to the furthest corners of the globe.

The U.S. State Department said Monday that three Americans died in the attacks: Victor Lynn Lovelady, Gordon Lee Rowan, and Frederick Buttaccio.

As details from the terrorist attack in Algeria continue to trickle out, multinational companies look to provide safety for employees working in politically unstable countries. Sam Olsen of Kroll Advisory Solutions talks to the WSJ's Deborah Kan about companies and the risk assessments they should be making.

Engineering company ENGlobal Corp., where Mr. Lovelady worked as a project manager until October, in a statement called Mr. Lovelady "a dedicated family man and a fantastic coworker."

Some of Mr. Lovelady's friends and relatives gathered Monday at his brother's home in Nederland, Texas, a middle-class enclave near the refineries an hour outside Houston. They didn't respond to inquiries.

Mr. Lovelady's brother, Michael, told the Beaumont Enterprise, a Texas newspaper, that Mr. Lovelady, 57, was a 1973 graduate of Nederland High School, and was survived by a wife, Maureen; a son, Grant, and a daughter, Erin. He said he last saw his brother in November, and added that the FBI asked the family not to comment on details on the terrorist attack while investigators were still gathering evidence. He told the newspaper he planned to make a more formal announcement on Tuesday.

"We would like to thank everyone for their thoughts and prayers and ask that you continue in prayer for our family as we mourn the loss of Victor," he said.

Some of Mr. Lovelady's relatives told KFDM, a CBS affiliate in the Beaumont region, that he was a contract worker who was only supposed to be at the site 28 days, and had only been in Algeria 10 days before the attack.

ENLARGE

Tore Bech, one of the missing Norwegians.
Statoil/Reuters

"He was a great father," his daughter, Erin, told the television station. " I have so many wonderful memories of my dad. He taught me the tools to live as an adult. He was very kind, loving and laid back. I could talk to my dad about anything. He gave great advice."

Mr. Lovelady had lived in Nederland but left his home there to move his family into a larger home closer to work in Houston about six months ago, and had already become close to his new neighbors.

"He was a good guy," said a next-door neighbor, who asked not to be named.

ENLARGE

Killed Briton Garry Barlow.
Agence France-Presse/Getty Images

Mr. Buttaccio, of Katy, Texas, was a onetime sales operations coordinator at BP, according to his LinkedIn profile, but it was unclear whom he worked for at the time of his death. He graduated from the University of Houston in 1976 with a bachelor's degree of business administration in accounting. Members of his family declined to comment on his death. In a statement released to the Associated Press, they said Mr. Buttaccio "spent a lifetime experiencing the world and always respecting everyone he met, no matter their position, culture, or religion."

Asked in a British television interview whether his deceased brother, Scotsman Kenneth Whiteside, ever worried about his security, Bob Whiteside said his brother was simply accustomed to working in difficult places like Russia and Africa. "That sort of thing never bothered Kenny. He's worked all over the world. He just didn't think about it," Mr. Whiteside said. An Algerian colleague of Mr. Whiteside's told the family that the militants shot Mr. Whiteside and three other hostages after Algerian forces began storming the complex Thursday, his brother said in the interview.

One of the victims of the Algerian attacks, a 46-year-old Briton named Paul Thomas Morgan, was once a member of the French Foreign Legion, according to Mike Lord, chief executive of the security firm that employed Mr. Morgan in Algeria.

"I think you'll find people who've been in the military a long time are attracted to this kind of work," said Mr. Lord, head of the U.K.-based Stirling Group, in a phone interview.

Mr. Lord said Mr. Morgan had been employed in Algeria for several years, working four weeks on and four weeks off, and was on his way out of the country when the militants struck. Mr. Morgan served as a liaison between the natural-gas venture and the Algerian security community, and was unarmed at the time he died, Mr. Lord said.

Another Stirling security specialist who died in the hostage crisis was 52-year-old Frenchman Yann Desjeux, a former member of the French special forces. Mr. Desjeux was killed during an attempt to free other hostages, the French government said.

"Mr. Desjeux, along with our other employees on the site, weren't armed in accordance with the Algerian law," a spokesman for Stirling said. Mr. Desjeux's sister, Marie-Claude Desjeux, told the French paper Le Journal de Dimanche that Mr. Desjeux left for Algeria just after Christmas.

When not on assignment with Stirling, Mr. Desjeux managed a small restaurant in the southwest of France. On Friday night, after France's foreign minister said that Mr. Desjeux had been killed, his friends and family gathered in his restaurant to mourn his death. He had two sons in their 20s.

In the U.K., the family of Garry Barlow confirmed his death in a statement Monday. Mr. Barlow's LinkedIn profile says he began working for the Algerian joint venture in October 2011 as a "gathering system supervisor" responsible for well hook-ups and other matters. In the statement, his wife Lorraine said Mr. Barlow "loved life and lived it to the full."

Also killed was Carlos Estrada, a Colombian national who had been living in the U.K., a Colombian government official confirmed Monday.

Among the missing Norwegians is Victor Sneberg, 56, who had been Statoil's country manager in Algeria since October 2010. A former Statoil colleague, Bjorn Vidar Leroen, told a Norwegian newspaper, Stavanger Aftenblad, that Mr. Sneberg brought a constructive and optimistic attitude to everything he did.

"If Victor is gone, it is completely meaningless. It is a big loss to Statoil, colleagues and friends, but most of all to his family. I don't want to give up hope. At the same time I am prepared that as time goes by, the possibility that we have lost someone is fairly large," the newspaper quoted him as saying.

The other missing Norwegians are Tore Bech, 58; Hans M. Bjone, 55;Thomas Snekkevik, 35; and Alf Vik, 43. Mr. Bech is married to the mother of Norway's minister of International Development, Heikki Holmas, the minister said in a statement Sunday. "It is with grief and despair that I have found out that my mother's husband, Tore Bech, is feared killed in the hostage drama in Algeria," Mr. Holmas said.

This copy is for your personal, non-commercial use only. Distribution and use of this material are governed by our Subscriber Agreement and by copyright law. For non-personal use or to order multiple copies, please contact Dow Jones Reprints at 1-800-843-0008 or visit www.djreprints.com.